There are families in my neighborhood – people I see in synagogue, at the grocery store, on my block – whose lives were shattered on October 7. Parents lost children. Children lost parents. The wounds of that day are not abstract or far away; they are close, personal, and deep. To suggest that any good came from that day feels, at first, like a betrayal of their suffering. And yet, there are moments in Jewish history where the categories of good and evil, curse and blessing, judgment and redemption, collide in ways we can hardly grasp.
In the months leading up to October 7, Iran’s grand strategy was coming into terrifying focus. They had nearly completed encircling the State of Israel with a coordinated network of heavily armed terrorist proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Islamic Jihad in Judea and Samaria, pro-Iranian militias in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. All of them trained, funded, and armed with precision missiles, drones, and infiltration units. Their goal was not harassment – it was annihilation. Not over time, but in one sudden, overwhelming assault. The idea was simple: strike from every front at once, overwhelm Israel’s defenses, break our national systems, and, God forbid, bring about a modern-day fall of Jerusalem.
Israel’s military and intelligence agencies, for all their sophistication, were caught sleeping. We now know how blind we were – not just to the Hamas threat in the south, but to the scope of the entire ring of fire Iran had quietly built around us. Syrian airspace was largely closed to us. American deterrence in the region had eroded. Internally, we were fractured, locked in endless protests and a bitter political power struggle that consumed our attention. We were, in every sense, unprepared for what was coming.
It was Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, who broke the stalemate. Whether out of overconfidence, desperation, or some internal political calculus, he chose not to wait for Iran’s coordinated strike. He launched the October 7 massacre prematurely, with the intention of dealing a death blow to Israel from the south. In doing so, he ignited a catastrophe – but not the one he intended. Instead of coordinating with Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militias, Sinwar went out on his own. The rest of the Iranian network was left watching from the sidelines, and the grand strategy collapsed under the weight of its own premature execution.
The price we paid was unbearable. But the war it may have prevented – the war we were not ready for, the war we now speak about openly only because it was narrowly averted – that war would have been the end. Had Sinwar waited just a few more months, as Iran had planned, we might have woken up to a scenario in which missiles were falling not only from Gaza, but from every direction; in which Hezbollah special forces were marching into the Galilee while Hamas fighters took hostages in Tel Aviv. There would have been no time to regroup, no time to respond. It would have been a coordinated assault designed not to wound, but to destroy.
To call October 7 a miracle is not to deny the horror. It is to recognize the pattern. Over and over in Jewish history, redemption does not emerge from calm. It is preceded by crisis. The Exodus from Egypt began only after the Israelite slaves reached the point of total despair. The Babylonian exile gave rise to the return and the rebuilding of the Second Temple. Even the devastation of the Holocaust led directly to the rebirth of the State of Israel. This is not theology designed to comfort the grieving. It is an undeniable, factual and historical pattern. This is the way God brings redemption to Israel.
Today is the 9th of Av, the day our people have long associated with destruction, exile, and grief. And yet, our sages teach that on this very day, the Messiah will be born. Embedded in our greatest tragedies are the first sparks of redemption.
Israeli journalist Menachem Rahat recently wrote about a lesser-known episode from 1866. That summer, a deadly plague swept through the Old City of Jerusalem, decimating the local Jewish population. The loss was staggering. But in its aftermath, a group of young Jews, driven by the need to protect and rebuild, began to move beyond the walls of the Old City. They established new neighborhoods – Nachlaot, Mea Shearim, Mishkenot Sha’ananim – that would eventually become the very center of Jewish Jerusalem. What appeared at the time to be a collapse was, in fact, the beginning of national renewal.
The final story has not yet been written. Our soldiers are still fighting bravely in Gaza, risking their lives to finish the job. But it is no longer a matter of speculation that the Hamas attack disrupted Iran’s timetable and exposed the magnitude of the threat. For the first time in years, Israeli society has largely united around the reality that our enemies intend to destroy us. That clarity, painful as it is, is also a kind of mercy. It may be the only thing that can awaken the resolve we need to face the battles still to come.
In the Torah, the greatest blessings are sometimes hidden inside curses. The generation that left Egypt did not reach the Promised Land, but they made it possible for the next generation to do so. October 7 shattered our illusions and exposed our vulnerability. It forced us to confront how close we came to total disaster. And far from destroying us, October 7 became the moment we began to win.
History will not remember that day as anything but a tragedy. But if we are honest – and if we believe, as we must, that God is not absent in times of suffering – then we must also consider that what began as an ambush may, in time, be revealed as a rescue. Not a miracle of comfort, but a miracle of interruption – bitter, costly, and perhaps just in time. That is the deeper message of the 9th of Av: that even on the day most scarred by loss, God begins to plant the seeds of redemption.
